Towards story-based content generation: From plot-points to maps

Abstract

Some computer game genres require meaningful stories and complex worlds in order to successfully engage players. In this paper we look at a procedural approach to story-based map generation focusing on the tight relationship between stories and the virtual worlds where those stories will unfold. Our long term goal is to develop procedural content generation techniques that can produce maps supporting multiple stories. We present an approach that takes, as input, the specification of a story space as a collection of plot points. Causal relations between these plot points and spatial relationships between locations define different story and spatial structures. Our system generates multiple configurations of a map, determines the stories that are actually supported in each map, and evaluates their quality, in order to find maps that support high quality stories from a storytelling perspective.